Where the Wisterias Bloom
by foxxywinter
Summary: [Johanna/OFC, AU] There is one and only one person left that Johanna Mason loves. One person President Snow left breathing as a means to control a reckless victor. One young woman who teaches Johanna Mason the hard way why storms are named after people.


**AN: My first Hunger Games fanfic. I'm new to making OCs for stories and haven't ever written an OC fic so I hope I don't screw this up. This is all in Johanna's POV and begins before Johanna's Games and will proceed past Mockingjay. The cover of the story is how I imagine Wisteria. Thank you for clicking and I hope you enjoy!**

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 **/1/ Hair**

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I'm five when I pull on Wisteria Smith's braid in class, just to get a rise out of the stuck-up and shallow girl who sits in front of me. She yelps and I laugh and I get detention.

 **.**

I'm nine when I flip her braid with my fingers during a boring math class (I'm gonna be a lumberjack so why do I need to know _fractions_?). She turns around, looks over her shoulder and scowls at me. I laugh.

"Is something wrong, princess?" I crow, examining her haughty posture.

"Do _not_ call me princess," she snaps.

"Oh, princess is the kindest word I've got for you," I say, smugly smirking.

She scoffs and turns to face the teacher. I continue doodling on my empty paper.

 **.**

I'm twelve when she stops wearing her hair in a braid and lets it cascade down her shoulders. I notice it is the color of blood: a deep, rich, tempting red. As my heart races, I pull on it and push her onto one of the dilapidated wooden lockers.

"Is something wrong, princess?" I ask as she stands up.

"Is something wrong, knuckle-dragger?" she purrs, crossing her arms and subtly sticking her nose up at me.

I just smirk at her and confidently stride away.

 **.**

I'm thirteen when I run into her on Reaping Day. She turns to me and furrows her brow. I suddenly recognize that the shallow, vapid girl I loved picking on for years had stunning green eyes the shade of leaves in the expansive District 7 forest.

"Wisteria," I say, grabbing her. The 'festivities' have yet to begin and so I seize my chance. She shoves me off of her. "Wisteria, I just wanted to say that I like your eyes."

"Paws off, knuckle-dragger," she haughtily snaps, glaring at me and wrinkling her nose as she walks away.

I lose her in the crowd of thirteen-year-olds in the crowded pen.

Two slum kids I have never met get Reaped that year. I honestly wished I would hear Wisteria Smith come out of the escort's mouth. But I bet she only has two slips since the rich girl does not need to take out a tesserae.

Not like me. I have a family to provide for.

 **.**

I'm fourteen when I sit after school carving curse words into an already beat-up desk. I am avoiding going home since my family has been a mess of two weary lumberjack parents, a defiant brother and two little mouths I struggle to feed. I am _not a coward_ , but I also want to pretend the situation does not exist, so intend to lie and say I got detention again.

Wisteria walks into the room and picks up her forgotten hair clip.

"You look awesome without that. If you took off all the fancy jewelry, you'd be real hot, princess," I say, setting my knife down. "Your hair seriously looks like a waterfall of blood and I am _all about that_ , bitch."

Coolly, Wisteria states, "Johanna Mason, I think you are the worst person I have ever met, and so I doubt I'd ever take fashion advice from you."

"Not fashion advice. It's not like they get Capitol Couture in the general store," I say, laughing mockingly and snorting at her expression. She clenches her fists. Her hands look lovely; I wonder if they are soft. One day, even if Wisteria Smith avoids the common job as a lumberjack, they will be calloused. "You really not to get out of that rich girl mindset."

Wisteria crosses her arms. "Johanna Mason, will you walk me home from school?"

"My pleasure, princess." I stab the knife into the table, then decide I do not want to lose it and so I pull it out. "Where to?"

Wisteria leads me down the streets. The tired men and women with splinters and cold sweat walk through the drizzle of rain that almost always dampens District 7. We live in a cloudy, rainy place that never fails to look bleak.

I expect to go to the rich part of our District sector. Instead, we arrive at a neighborhood not unlike my own. Wisteria turns to me.

"This is where I live. This is not where princesses live."

I roll my eyes. "Nice try. You're way too full of yourself to be the kid of a lumberjack."

"I'm _not_ shallow," snarls Wisteria, and I think I might have momentarily shattered her cold, arrogant exterior.

"Please," I snort, "I could stand in a puddle of you and not get my feet wet."

"Fine. Maybe I'm shallow." She removes the clip from her hair and extends her palm. "I get the jewels from my mother. She is sleeping with the foreman and he... gives her things."

"And you're aiming for a rich husband. I get it."

Wisteria rolls her eyes as if I have said something abysmally stupid. I think she needs a good beating but I'm smart enough to hold back. "I don't want a husband, knuckle-dragger."

"Are you in love with me?" I begin to laugh.

"You're so far from my type I can hardly put it into words. I just thought this might shut you up. Goodbye," says Wisteria as she walks down the street and enters one of the dilapidated homes.

I do not know what to make of it.

 **.**

I'm fifteen when me and Wisteria become lab partners. I think the teachers cared enough to want to resolve our difference, and I hate the idiots for it. I'm sick of listening to these fake authority figures and every day I consider dropping out to work as a lumberjack.

Wisteria does the work. Not well. She is not the brightest star in the sky, but I'm lazy so I take the mediocre grades she earns performing out labs.

"I hope you're happy with your C," says Wisteria.

I cackle. " _You're_ the dumbass who got it."

"Perhaps if you helped, we would have done better."

"I don't need this bullshit. I only have to wait 'til my birthday to drop out and work. With axes and shit I actually care about," I say, shrugging. I don't care if she fails or I fails or whatever. She better get that into her thick, pretty little skull.

Wisteria grimaces and haughtily rolls her eyes. Her arrogant smirk leaves me an inch away from breaking her nose. "You have a foul mouth, knuckle-dragger. It repulses me."

"That sounds more like a perk than a downside, princess."

"Ugh," growls Wisteria Smith. "I don't have the patience for this."

She skitters away. I look after her and shamelessly admire her ass a little bit before I stop myself and remember that, while Wisteria is _hot_ , she is severely lacking in the personality department. I've never met a worse person than her.

Sex with her would not be horrible. Taking her out to the kissing rock in the forest and getting down with that and then pretending it did not happen. Cast her aside and move on with my career as the most kickass lumberjack in District 7 history.

I'm already damn good with an axe.

 **.**

I'm fifteen when I show up at Wisteria's Reaping Day party uninvited. She hosts it on the day before the dreaded drawing of names. She glowers at me when I emerge from the trees and proudly stand in the dim sunlight that pierces through the grim clouds.

"I don't remember inviting any mouth-breathers like yourself," purrs Wisteria and I smirk at her. It makes her blush bright red. "This is a party for _likeable_ people."

I glance around at the guests sitting in the forest with their illegal moonshine and inexplicably skimpy outfits on a cold, rainy day. "You're all the assholes of the school so I wouldn't really say _likeable people_."

"If you hate us so much, why are you here?" Wisteria demands.

"The refreshments." I smirk and sit down beside the boy with the moonshine.

The party progresses and I confirm my hatred for everyone. Yet, as my vision gets blurry and my head spins and aches, I cannot stop looking at the sexy girl by the acrid campfire.

"Hey," I slur, "princess, have you ever been to the kissing rock?"

Wisteria rolls her eyes. "Yes. Of course I have."

"So, not a virgin."

"I can be a virgin and have gone to the kissing rock," says Wisteria, chiming a clearly fake giggle. She shrugs a shoulder and gives me a look as if she thinks I am a termite.

I do not let it affect me. Fuck her.

"Wanna go check it out?" I ask tauntingly, nodding my head towards the rock.

Wisteria exchanges glances with her friends, a wicked smile on her rosy, plump lips. "I would literally rather die, knuckle-dragger," she purrs, making the bitter insult sound damned pretty.

"So would I. I was only gonna mess with your head there anyway." I smirk and lean back. She cannot make me leave this party and she cannot make me feel anything but hot hate.

I was always stronger than everybody else.

 **.**

I'm still fifteen and the 70th Hunger Games are on television. I watch in the Square alone—albeit surrounded by many people—trying to get away from my screaming parents and angry brother. At last, the girl from District 7 shows up on the screen. She has lovely blonde hair and big blue eyes, hotter than the girl from One, and, miraculously, she survives the bloodbath by running.

The cameras show the careers pursuing her and someone bursts into hysterical tears. I expect it to be her mother, but then I see Wisteria Smith jumping up and running away.

She breaks the law, and I break the law too by following her.

Wisteria sits in an alleyway between the shoemaker and baker. I catch up with her, panting. She glares at me with her teary eyes.

"I'm no good at making people feel better," I say, "but you're…"

"She's more to me than a friend," Wisteria says, and I almost recoil at how forward she is being. To _me_ , the knuckle-dragger. "I love her and we were… we were gonna be together before she was Reaped. She was gonna save me."

I stand, frozen, unsure what to do. I hate Wisteria Smith, I think, but I also want her to stop wailing. But nobody ever taught me how to be kind, and I never tried to learn.

"I'm, uh…" I say. A cannon fires. Wisteria looks away but I turn to face the screen, squinting at it. I turn to Wisteria. "I'm sorry."

I think I speak sincerely. Maybe I do.

Kneeling, I touch that blood red hair again and look into those leaf green eyes. Her freckles speckle her entire body and I only notice them as I look at her so closely.

Wisteria whispers, "I don't need your pity."

"I don't pity anybody. You should know that," I say in earnest. "But she's gone. I don't really know nobody who's gone, but I'm…" I awkwardly pat her shoulder. "I guess I'm here?"

"You're bad at consoling people," Wisteria says. "Let's go hide before the peacekeepers see we're not watching."

"You want me to come with you?" I ask, bewildered.

"You followed me for a reason," Wisteria says, her voice constricted with emotion.

I shrug and follow her.

We make it to the woods and walk into them. She guides me to where she hosted her party the day before the Reaping, the day before she apparently lost her girlfriend. We arrive at the kissing rock and I freeze in place.

"This is… an interesting place for hide-and-seek," I say, cocking an eyebrow. I should not mock her—it's kicking her while she's down—but she does not react to my teasing and bullying like she usually does.

Wisteria presses her lips against mine. I am confused. Happy. But confused.

I let her lay me down on the painful, uneven rock, among trees with initials and hearts carved into them.

She sure knows what she's doing.

I don't.

 **.**

I'm sixteen when Reaping Day comes again. Wisteria and I have not spoken since our night of weird, awkward elbow-y and confusing passion in the woods. I dropped out of school and got to show off my axe skills in the forest every day. She stayed in school so she could get a better job, maybe at the mill or a merchant shop. It was just like the girl to want wealth and prestige. I don't give a fuck about those two things, but Miss Shallow-ness does.

But, now, she stands beside me in the pen. We keep exchanging awkward glances every few moments. She looks at me and looks at her feet.

We sit through the boring ceremony, tense. I have forty slips in that bowl. The odds are absolutely not in my favor.

I confirm that suspicion when Licinia Domitus draws a name from the girl's bowl.

"Johanna Mason!" she chirps, the microphone making her voice resonate. She grins as she scans the crowd for me. I fleetingly raise up my hand and the crowd in the sixteen-year-old pen parts so I may walk through.

I want to punch that smile off of Licinia's face. Slowly, I begin to walk, a slow, trancelike motion. Suddenly, a hand seizes my wrist and pulls me back for a brief moment, dragging me into a deep, passionate kiss. The cameras must catch this display of affection from a mean, popular, shallow bitch.

Staggering, I escape Wisteria's grasp, briefly lock eyes with her, and walk up to the stage.

Blight helps me to my feet. I turn and gaze out at the crowd. They stand in silence and I doubt a single soul cares that I am marching off to my death. I bet all of them are just happy it wasn't them or wasn't their daughter.

Well, fuck 'em all because I'm coming home at all costs.

I'm good with an axe. I'm not afraid to get in fights. I'm smart enough to come up with a strategy that will shatter expectations.

Fuck. 'em. All.

Especially Wisteria and her soft lips and glittery eyes and perky breasts and horrible personality.


End file.
